To Kill with Impunity
by Drow Elf
Summary: A series of short oneshots exploring character flaws in many of the Realms' heroes. R
1. Chapter 1

**To Kill with Impunity**

Drizzt knocked his enemy's blade aside and plunged Icingdeath expertly between the goblin's ribs, piercing the lung. For good measure, he brought Twinkle around and stabbed it through the heart.

The goblin, blood trickling from the corners of its reptilian mouth, looked down at the fiery wounds on its body. Then its yellow eyes focused on Drizzt's lavender orbs.

"So certain you've given up the ways of your kin, drow?" rasped the goblin, impressively since he pretty much had only one lung to draw upon.

Surprised, Drizzt yanked out the scimitars, each with a spurt of dark blood. The creature crumpled to the ground.

As it inhaled its last breath, the monster reached into a pouch and drew forth a small, roughly carved figurine. As close as Drizzt could make out, it was a carving of a female goblin. The goblin softly kissed the figurine and moved no more.

Drizzt began his trek back to Mithral Hall, back to his Catti-brie, troubled.


	2. Part Two: Heartless

**Heartless**

Jarlaxle shivered and drew his heavy, fur-lined cloak closer about him as he stepped down a snow-laden street in Luskan.

With the sun setting and the temperature dropping, there were no people on this particular street except the drow mercenary and a beggar in the gutter.

Although Jarlaxle had trained his eyes to ignore the decay of society (unless, of course, if he perceived them as a possible threat,) his attention was briefly drawn to the vagabond as she cried plaintively out to him.

She was young, even by human standards. She was older than fifteen, perhaps, but certainly younger than twenty. In her arms she cradled a small bundle of rags that concealed a wailing baby, who was clearly sick with hunger. Undoubtedly, the baby was the result of a desperate, ill-advised bid in the prostitution industry.

She cried out to him again, begging with all her soul for a single coin so she could find shelter for her baby for the night.

Suddenly painfully aware of the mass of clinking gold, silver, and copper jostling in a pouch against his pant leg, Jarlaxle shook his head and upped his pace past the homeless girl, who, he noticed, was missing several teeth, as though she had been brutally kicked or beaten.

"You're heartless!" she screeched at his back.

He kept walking.

The next morning, he walked past the very same spot. Two figures, the girl and her infant, lay naked in the snow, their clothes indubitably stolen by other beggars. Jarlaxle didn't need to note their blue, stiff skin or lack of movement to know that they were dead. Jarlaxle Baenre was no stranger to death.

Jarlaxle continued on his way back to his warm, luxurious inn, vaguely troubled.


	3. Part Three: Perpetual Triangle

**Perpetual Triangle**

Catti-brie smiled at Wulfgar, glad that he had finally returned from Icewind Dale. To her mild surprise, he smiled back, one of the few times he had done so since the death of Delly.

He had complimented her on her looks that morning, as was nearly customary nowadays. She always thanked him with a smile or (more often) waved off his compliments with self-deprecating declarations full of false-modesty.

But she had not failed to notice how his gaze seemed to linger upon her milliseconds longer than necessary, how he always seemed to be looking away when she and Drizzt touched. The other night, he had gripped her hand with a tenderness that spoke of more than friendship.

She should have spurned him.

She didn't.

Now, by chance, they met in an isolated hallway and exchanged smiles.

She opened her mouth to say something, possibly concerning the weather. Wulfgar, impulsively, overwhelmingly, cut her off with a kiss, one that lasted for a very long time. Eternity, maybe.

She should have spurned him.

She didn't.

"I still love you," he whispered in her ear before continuing down the hallway.

She crawled into bed that night, her mind a silent maelstrom of emotion. When Drizzt embraced her, she thought not of her lithe drow husband, but of the immense, brawny arms of a certain emotionally torn barbarian.

She snuggled closer to Drizzt, lost and troubled.


	4. Part Four: Guilty Gratification

**Guilty Gratification**

Regis was captivated by it. It dimmed all the others by comparison. Dozens of gleaming red jewels sparkled innocently up at him from the unwisely ajar display case, but one stood out among them, like the moon against a background of stars.

He wanted this thing, this gem, and years of pick-pocketing in the streets of Calimport had instilled in him the immoral value to take what one wants.

His acute peripheral vision told him no one was watching. His fingers twitched. He licked his lips, fully understanding the gravity of what he was about to do, but was unable to stop himself.

With the speed of a striking cobra, his hand darted into the case, and he plucked a single, sparkling jewel from its depths, pocketing it within a second with expert precision.

Under the careful mask of feigned detachment, he nonchalantly bade Pasha Pook goodnight for what he knew was the last time….unless he was caught, of course.

In which case, he probably would not have time to say anything at all.

The thought was not reassuring.

Before the sun had completely set, the villainous halfling was on a swift caravan out of the desert city.

He could practically smell Pook's hunters seeking him, for surely the depraved pasha had noticed by now….

"You're a dirty, thieving fool, Regis," he berated himself under his breath, but it was far too late to turn back now. He would flee north and make friends, powerful friends who could protect poor old Regis and drive away whatever fiends Pook sent his way.

Under his cloak, he clutched his prize, wondering if it was worth the price he had set upon his head.

That night, when the caravan stopped and made camp, Regis' mind churned up nightmares of what would happen to those who failed to find him. Probably get chopped up in front of Pasha Pook's eyes, or torn apart by Pook's prized cats.

And for the ones who actually found the halfling, well, they would have to contend with the friends the halfling would have cunningly surrounded himself with.

Put off by his own deviousness, Regis tossed in his sleep, troubled.


	5. Part Five: Just a Job

**Just a Job**

Artemis silently appraised the shack with an air of condescending superiority. It matched thousands of others in the destitute metropolis of Calimport: small, one room, door hanging off its hinges, a single, rhombus-shaped hole in the wall that served a dual purpose of window and ventilation.

The smell of sewage and decay was especially pungent here, in this part of the city, though years spent in identical areas in his childhood had trained his senses to dismiss the stench. However, he fleetingly amused himself with the thought of a distant cliché female noble swooning at the reek.

The family patriarch had missed a payment. When this had been brought to Pasha Pook's attention, all of his other guild bullies had been out bullying other people, so he had ordered Artemis to deliver a message.

This irked the assassin; it was the sort of unprofessional scare tactics he had tried to distance himself from. Besides, he had been preparing to track down a priority one target: some halfling thief that had stolen one of Pook's gems, as if the pasha didn't have enough already.

Confirming, unnecessarily, that no guards or traps awaited between him and the broken door, Artemis Entreri loosened his jeweled dagger in its sheath and stepped, uninvited, obviously, into the hovel.

The family of five (father, mother, two adolescent girls, and a small, sandy-haired boy) looked up fearfully at him from their meager supper. Recognition registered on all their faces. Everyone knew the infamous countenance of Artemis Entreri.

"Hakim Dochorquer, you have failed to reimburse Pasha Pook, who, in good faith, loaned you a small portion of his much-needed treasury; I am here to grant you an extension, at the usual price," said Artemis.

Before anyone could react, Artemis fluidly stepped forward, unsheathed his dagger, and swept it across the sandy-haired boy's throat. There was a very brief tingling as the boy's life force traveled through the cold metal of the blade up into his arm, to be dispersed throughout the assassin's body, but Entreri did not pause to relish it. There was no honor in robbing the soul of a child.

Immediately, the hovel was a cacophony of howls of grief and shock. Hakim vaulted over the flimsy table to catch his son before he hit the ground. Mindless of the abundance of blood soaking into his lice-ridden clothing, the man rocked his son's corpse, moaning the boy's name over and over, _Anthony_.

Seconds later, the boy's family was gathered about his cadaver, their tears spilling into his freed lifeblood, all crying out his name in between sobs.

Abruptly, Artemis was uncomfortable, as if he were eavesdropping on some sacred event, intruding on the family's combined grief.

No one looked at him; no one even gave him a thought. They just mourned over their lost kin, shunning Entreri, not even giving him the satisfaction of their fear.

Monumentally put off, Artemis shuffled out into the street, slamming to door to soften the cries of the wailing, broken family.

Taking a deep breath of the warm, desert air, he made his way back to Pasha Pook's headquarters, uncharacteristically troubled.


	6. Part Six: The Failure

**The Failure**

Bruenor stood at the brink of a mighty chasm, clutching a magnificent, new axe in his hands.

He was trembling; the axe shook. It had nothing to do with the freezing wind blasting its way through the mountain pass.

He had done something he had known must never be attempted.

He had tried to make Aegis-fang's equal.

He failed.

The axe was glorious. Mithral and adamantite wove together in intricate patterns. Diamond dust glittered upon its surface. Any warrior in all the realms would be honored to wield it.

But it wasn't perfect.

When he had awoken from his magic-induced coma, he noticed that over half the diamond dust he had thrown lay scattered on the ground, a fortune lost in the snow. There were flaws in the alloys, microscopic cracks that no one could possibly notice.

Bruenor noticed. It was his creation; he _felt_ the blemishes in it.

It was an outstanding axe, but it simply wasn't in the same league as Aegis-fang.

Tears trickled out of the corners of his eyes to become lodged, frozen, in his fiery beard.

What a failure he was! His girl was hurt, probably would never walk correctly again. His boy had left them, probably for good. His people looked to him for leadership, and he had gone adventuring after Gauntlgrym instead, and he never found it.

He signed the Treaty of Garumn's Gorge, allowing orcs to build a recognized kingdom next to Mithral Hall.

What a failure he was! He failed as a king. He failed as a father. He failed as a friend.

With a savage, guttural cry, he hurled the valuable, imperfect axe into the yawning abyss before him, thinking dryly that the clashes and clangs it made as it dashed upon the rocks echoed the chaos in his soul.

Wiping his nose on the back of an already soggy leather gauntlet, Bruenor returned to his lonely throne, intensely troubled.


End file.
